Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest is a multi-faceted project by Los Angeles-based artist Alexandra Grant encompassing a series of public drawing sessions, reading groups, artist collaborations and an installation at 18th Street Arts Center. Co-curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas and Isabelle Le Normand, this work premiers in Santa Monica and is presented at Mains d’Oeuvres in Saint-Ouen, France this fall.

Based on an ongoing exchange with the iconic French author, poet, playwright and philosopher Hélène Cixous, Grant focuses on Cixous’ book Philippinesas a source for imagery, centering on the repeating thematic of the forest as a profound shared space. Drifting between a real and an imagined place, the forest becomes a site for communion with what Cixous terms “the perfect Other.” In Philippines, Cixous explores the philosophical and sociological constructs of the “Other,” linking texts from Sigmund Freud on the shared dream, Jacques Derrida on telepathy, and the story of PeterIbbetson, a novel by Georges du Maurier, where two childhood friends separated by class and country are reunited as adults in their joined dream-life. Within Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest, Grant examines the “twinned” ideas of Philippines, such as dreaming and reality, telepathy and empathy, and relationships between man and woman, adult and child, and colony and colonizer, through illustration of the text, an installation of the forest as image and stage-set, and through collaborations with other artists and the public.

Structured as a residency and an exhibition, Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest extends Grant’s studio practice into the arena of public engagement. Grant will hold collaborative drawing sessions ongoing through the month of May that invite community participation to construct a large-scale, site-specific work. Exploring the space between a specified aesthetic and shared process, Grant engages artists Frances Garreston, Channing Hansen, Bari Ziperstein, Annelie McKenzie and Tina Linville to produce sculptural, “Visiting Trees” (Arbres d’Ailleurs) for the installation. Artists Lita Albuquerque, Renee Petropoulos, Steve Roden and Audrey Cottin will undertake “Drawing Residencies” as part the participatory drawing illustrating Philippines. The general public – students, guests and passersby – are invited to draw and will be named as participants.

Alexandra Grant is a text-based artist who uses language and networks of words as the basis for her work in painting, drawing and sculpture. Grant is known as a ‘radical collaborator’ – it is collaborating that shapes what she does outside of the studio as much as within it. Grant has worked with writers as diverse as hypertext pioneer Michael Joyce, actor Keanu Reeves, artist Channing Hansen, and philosopher Hélène Cixous.

Grant’s first solo exhibition at a museum was in 2007, organized by curator Alma Ruiz, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). Numerous other shows at museums and galleries have included Grant’s work, including the 2010 California Biennial of Art at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Artists’ Museum at MOCA in 2010-1, Human Nature: Contemporary Art from the Collection at LACMA in 2011, and Drawing Surrealism, also at LACMA in 2012.

Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest will be presented from September 6 to October 20, 2013 at Mains d’Oeuvres in Saint-Ouen, France.